The last man to go was the priest. As he mounted his horse I saw him hand Dick a sheaf of dingy-looking bank-notes, and they parted, hoping to meet again the following season, when the latter pledged himself to bring something out of his own stable to race against the mare. But we only appeared there once since in public, and that was at a wedding. Before the next autumn came round we had settled down into steady married men. I still hunt, but have grown stouter, and the old mare has given place to a weight-carrier. The mare draws my wife and children to church regularly, however, and though rather matronly-looking, is as full of life and spirit as when she started with her master to win his first and "last" steeple-chase.
_Hei mihi præteritum tempus!_ That is, the past time when new Fishery Laws did not forbid, and we young sportsmen might combat the salmon in his own element, armed, like the Retiarius, with a trident, but, unlike him, without a net. Ill-omened word! is it not to thee that the interdict is owing?--blockading the mouth of every river with thy cowardly meshes, only withdrawn for the barest minimum of hours out of the twenty-four to give free passage to the home-sick fish and lusty grilse to re-seek the dear old pools of his birth. For the grace now extended, and the check put upon the rapacious suppliers of Billingsgate and Leadenhall, we shall ever be grateful to the Commissioners, even though the same powers that have removed the stake-nets have prohibited the use of the spear, whose operation, as numbered amongst the things past, we purpose to record.
And first for the science of the sport. Salmon-spearing, as we used to perform it, was of two kinds. First, that by day; second, that by night. For the first, we choose that day when the more noble art of the rod and fly would be exercised in vain--a clear sunny day, with as little ripple as possible, and the water low, the field of operation being generally the upper pools, or, in preference, the larger "burn" or mountain stream whence the river took its source.
The implements, a spear, or rather iron trident of three prongs, barbed like a fish-hook, the prongs being about two inches apart, with a shaft some ten feet in length; two or three long poles, whose uses will be seen presently, and either a "gaff" or a landing-net. The essentials, a hawk-like keenness of eye sharpened by long practice, a goat-like agility amongst rocks and stones, and a philosophical indifference to all such minor discomforts as a complete wetting and a frequent fall or bruise. The night-work differed in the change of locality, the favourite spot being the long shallow "reach" at the river's mouth, and in the substitution of fir-torches for the poles of the day's programme. Thus much for the nature of the sport; for a description of it let the reader lend a kindly ear while we suppose the scene by the banks of the river Arkail, in the Northern Highlands of Scotland (a name which, by the way, he will in vain try to establish in the best of educational atlases or tourists' guides).